


Have Yourself An MI:6 Christmas

by prince_benji



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Christmas fic, Eve is devious, Kissing, M/M, Q is awkward, Resolved Sexual Tension, ugly christmas jumpers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2840756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prince_benji/pseuds/prince_benji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the most wonderful time of the year, and what's Christmas without a little prank between friends? OR The one where Q is clueless but gets clued-up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have Yourself An MI:6 Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> A silly little festive thing. Happy Holidays all!
> 
> Beta read by beaubete - thank you so much!

Q couldn't help tugging at the hem of his jumper nervously like a schoolboy, feeling like it didn’t quite _fit._

 

It wasn't that he was unused to jumpers; quite the opposite. He owned quite a collection of geek chic cardigans in varied colours, and was also known to sport other garments of the knitted variety as suited the occasion, which in Q Branch was every day.

 

Just not quite such - _festive_ ones. An unkindly person might have said garish.

 

There was a grinning reindeer, and a fluffy cat, and tinsel, and some rather ill-advisedly placed sequins, and the whole thing was a mess of red, green and silver. It was quite honestly the ugliest jumper Q had ever seen, and so he had done the only sensible thing and bought it. If you were going to be seen in an ugly jumper, it was better to go all-in than try and preserve your dignity, right?

 

Besides, Eve had hinted at a prize, and Q was nothing if not competitive. Also, the colours brought out the green of his eyes rather splendidly.

 

Eve's '(Ugly) Christmas (jumper) party' was a thing to take seriously, after all, since he'd been bombarded with text messages and e-mails about it every five minutes for the past three weeks. As if that hadn’t been enough, she had reminded him about it in person every time they crossed paths (which admittedly wasn't often, considering that Q had been tinkering down in the testing labs for the better part of December). She had been insistent enough that Q had finally caved and promised to spend an evening rubbing shoulders and getting drunk if that meant she would leave him alone to tend to his projects well until the next year. Eve pinky-promised. Q was left feeling vaguely anticipatory and anxious about the whole thing.

 

The only upside he could think of was that Bond wasn’t in the country. Not that Bond would attend such ridiculous parties anyway, even if he were. As things stood, Q was quite certain he would be able to socialize for the required number of hours to remain in Eve’s good graces, and if he managed to slink away as people were leaving and head back to his labs for some late night tinkering who would be any the wiser?

 

Q tugged at the collar of his jumper a bit uneasily, a bit irritated at the sequins, and then smoothed his hair back with both his hands; he had spent all of ten seconds styling his hair in the tiny men's room by the labs, rubbing a bit of product between his hands and then pushing them into his hair and twirling his fingers, and deeming the end result good enough for government work. He checked his watch as he neared the place of the festivities - the upstairs cafeteria - and stopped in his tracks as he saw people ahead.

 

Eve, to be more precise, and Bill Tanner, engaged in conversation with drinks in hand, looking like a pair of bona fide movie stars. Q gaped.

 

Eve was wearing a sequinned golden mini-dress that complemented her figure perfectly with heels so high Q's eyes watered in sympathy. Tanner, on the other hand, could have (almost) put double-oh-seven himself to shame in that suit of his. The people milling about were equally smartly dressed, and Q took a quick look down at his chequered trousers and his garish jumper as a horrible realisation started to form.

 

Tanner started to turn into his general direction as Mallory joined them, dressed to the nines as well, and Q did the only sensible thing. He bolted to the nearest unlocked closet before anyone could see him.

 

~

 

Office supplies. Wonderful. No matter how he had tried to drag MI:6 to the digital age, there were still some dinosaurs in the Office who insisted on having binders and pencils and sharpeners and legal pads, and Q had long since given up on that particular battle. He settled for resenting his surroundings in general.

 

Q drew in a big breath, and instantly sneezed at the dust, coughing irritably. It seemed this particular closet hadn't been cleaned for ages, and it was too dark to see anything, anyway.

 

"Of all the bloody things," Q muttered. Had he got the date wrong? He could've sworn Eve's messages had specified Monday the 22nd, 8 pm, but unless he'd just entered some weird alternate reality with an alternate MI:6 it simply couldn't be right. He was just starting to write an urgent inquiry to Eve when the door opened again and another person came in, running straight into Q. Q's hundred-and-forty pounds when wet was no match for the muscular form of the newcomer, and he was bowled aside embarrassingly easily.

 

He all but flew backwards from the force of impact, and oomphed as his back struck a shelf behind him, rattling the items. A pair of hands grabbed him by his biceps to steady him, and Q, shocked and unsure if he was being attacked, prepared to trigger the alarm on his mobile phone.

 

"Easy now.”

 

The voice was instantly recognisable, even if Q mostly heard it through the comms, and much more rarely in person.

 

James bloody Bond.

 

 _Of course_ it was James Bond.

 

Q wanted to bang his head against the shelf in utter frustration. Of course he would end up in a bloody office supply closet with James Bond of all people in MI:6 (who wasn’t even supposed to be in the country, adding insult to injury). Just what exactly did the universe have against him? He was going to find the person/entity/deity responsible and send them, technologically speaking, back to the Stone Age if it was the last thing he did. This was just ridiculously inconvenient, considering his embarrassing and rather strong attraction to the double-oh agent. Who under no circumstances could learn of it. Ever. Times infinity.

 

"Yes, thank you, Double-oh-seven," he said dryly, and rolled his eyes as Bond barked in surprised laughter.

 

"Q?! What are you doing in the closet?"

 

Q sniffed in what he hoped was a superior manner to cover his embarrassment. "I could ask the same of you, Double-oh-seven." It was probably too much to think that Bond had followed him (although his heart fluttered a bit at the thought before he squashed it). Then, as a mental light bulb switched on, "If you're planning some sort of rendezvous with a co-worker I'm strongly inviting you to reconsider, because I was here first, and I'm not leaving. And I'm not going to bear witness to any interpersonal canoodling, either.”

 

Bond scoffed. "A rendezvous in an MI:6 closet? Hardly my style, Q." Q could sense him dusting his shoulders in affront.

 

"Yes, well, I'm aware this is not exactly The Ritz London, but I know there are plenty of impressionable young people in our employment and since you're --" Right, so he wasn't going to go on about how fit Bond was to the agent in question. Q changed tack. "The question stands, though: what are you doing here, if not corrupting some innocent young thing? Stocking up on your pens and rubbers?"

 

Q thanked the heavens that it was absolutely dark, and Bond couldn't see his face that had to be red by now. Why did he have to stand so close? Q could practically feel his body heat from where he was standing through his clothes. And why did Bond have to smell so – good? It had to be the dust affecting his sense of smell – as well as his common sense – because suddenly he wanted to nuzzle closer to trace that scent to its very origins. Q mentally shook himself. Five minutes in a closet and he was going bonkers already.

 

"I think I was the butt end of a prank," Bond said, a bit grudgingly. "A word of advice, Quartermaster; don't trust a word that comes out of Eve Moneypenny's mouth. Nor her messages."

 

Q's brows climbed; this was curious. "Elaborate?"

 

"I was led into thinking this was a -- different kind of Christmas party."

 

Q used the light from his mobile phone to illuminate Bond's figure, and promptly snorted so loud he had to clap a hand over his mouth.

 

Bond, too, was wearing a Christmas jumper.

 

A god-awful, horrible, _ugly_ Christmas jumper.

 

Bond's jumper went beyond garish, to utterly reprehensible. It was, in fact, ghastly enough for Q to get a little jealous.

 

There were several Santa Clauses, and candy canes, and toffee apples all in a sweet jumbled mess; thankfully the light was low enough that Q couldn't quite make out all the colours involved, but that they were plentiful and migraine-inducing he didn't doubt for a second.

 

It should have looked utterly ridiculous on that impossibly fit, wide-shouldered body. It did. It shouldn't have been hot. It wasn't, in the slightest. Warm maybe. Q couldn't help the chortles that escaped at this mental dialogue.

 

"Good lord, Double-oh-seven," he managed, "what in God's name is _that_?"

 

" _This_ ," Bond said, "was the guaranteed winner of Eve's ugly jumper party."

 

Q couldn't help it. He broke into a laughter so hysterical he couldn't speak for a full two minutes. Bond endured this with relatively good humour, a smile tugging at his lips.

 

"Oh well," Q finally said when he got himself under control, hiccoughing a little. "I guess fair is only fair. You showed me yours, so I'll show you mine. I guess Eve got us both."

 

He directed the light onto himself, and waited in unimpressed silence for Bond's hilarity to subside, which it did in a minute and a half. It was quite an intoxicating thing, really, to make the mostly stoic agent break out in full laughter, even if it was at his expense.

 

"Number one contender, no doubt, Q," Bond said, mirth still leaking through. "It goes especially well with those trousers of yours. Anyway, I thought you were hosting a Christmas party for your Branch in here, or something equally sinister. I should probably be relieved you're just hiding in the closet."

 

Q bristled and straightened his glasses. "I'm not hiding! I was planning a controlled retreat just when you barged in."

 

Bond hummed, and again, inexplicably, Q was aware just how close he was, and how good he smelled. It was chlorine mixed with Bond's aftershave - wait a minute, chlorine?

 

"Did you came straight from the pool?" he asked. Now there was a mental image he didn't need; Bond's muscular figure cutting through water, stroke by stroke, straining muscles gleaming…. Bond answered the affirmative, ending his musings right before they got embarrassing. Q quickly thought back on what he knew of Bond's mission and schedule, and frowned. “And why are you here to begin with? Did everything go as planned? I thought you weren't coming in until after Boxing Day!"

 

Bond made a slightly amused noise. "I was able to wrap things up earlier than expected. And Eve bullied me into coming."

 

"Bullied?"

 

"Yes. Terrible threats were involved. Apparently it was of utmost importance that I be here."

 

Q grumbled under his breath. He didn't like it when he didn't know exactly where his agents were at any given minute, but then again, he had stepped down from handling missions some weeks back when it became apparent that some of the most important projects of the entire Branch had stalled in the critical testing stage and he needed to be involved personally. He hadn't had the time to explain the change to the agents, and had deemed it unnecessary, anyway, since they were appointed other handlers in his absence.

 

"How did R manage the comms?" he asked out of curiosity not because he doubted R's competence, but because he wanted to know if she and Bond had got along, from his perspective.

 

"Well enough. She's not you, though. The acerbic tongue was slightly lacking."

 

Q left that cryptic comment well alone, and walked past Bond to the door, daring to take a quick peek to the corridor, and quickly pulling back.

 

"Good lord. I think I just saw the minister!"

 

“What, who?”

 

That was it. He could have perhaps stomached the sniggers of MI:6 personnel, and managed to congratulate Eve on a prank well pulled, but he wasn't going to face the bloody minister in the ugliest piece of clothing he had ever owned. He was a Branch head, for crying out loud, the youngest in MI:6, in fact, and he didn't need to add any eccentricities to his reputation. As for Bond, he suspected the man would rather saunter out naked than be seen wearing that atrocity he was wearing. And considering their little closet was placed in a rather busy hallway, it was unlikely they would make it out unnoticed.

 

Right, Q was going to replace Eve's work station with a Hello Kitty laptop, so help him God. They were stuck in the bloody closet unless Q got them out, and he intended to do just that. He pulled out his mobile phone and went to work.

 

"You know, the one who's always on M's case, whatshisname," Q answered absentmindedly. If he hacked into the internal control systems from his mobile phone he should be able to trigger the fire alarms, or cause a blackout, or anything really to empty the building. There was no way he was going to spend the evening cooped up in a closet with Bond! He was likely to do something stupid, like swoon or fall back to excessive sarcasm, and either way Bond would find him ridiculous.

 

“Right. Well of course he would be here.”

 

"Some peace and quiet, please,” Q snapped as he first revised and then abandoned his plan. If there was a minister in the building they'd likely have their security detail with them, and anything out of the ordinary, such as convenient little blackouts, would cause instant suspicion and raise the alarm. Q didn't fancy getting into a gunfight in the middle of the bloody Office. If he had to die in line of duty, he wasn't going to do it wearing Rudolph meets Grumpy cat. "You should make yourself comfortable, Double-oh-seven, because I believe this is going to take a while."

 

He expected Bond to go in a rant about how he wanted to get out of there right now and how Q should make it so. Instead, "James."

 

Q blinked. "What?"

 

"If we're going to be stuck in a bloody closet all night the least you can do is call me James. Double-oh-seven is a bloody mouthful."

 

Q swallowed the double entendre that instantly sprang to mind. "Fine. James." The tips of Q's ears felt warm, and again he was glad that Bond couldn't see him. Right. Back to work.

~

 

“I'm hungry.”

 

Q wordlessly handed Bond half a protein bar from his pocket without looking up from his mobile.

 

“This is half-eaten. And it came from your pocket.”

 

“I can make it go back in my pocket,” Q told him, and smiled to himself as Bond bit into the bar without further complaint.

 

A minute later, “I'm thirsty.”

 

“What are you, a child? I'm sorry but I don't carry flasks of whisky around,” Q said. “Now shush and let me think.”

 

“You call that thinking, I call that tinkering.” Bond's voice was an honest to God drawl. Q swore to himself he wouldn't embarrass himself by throwing himself at the man. It was getting increasingly difficult, though, being in such close proximity with the man he'd been crushing on since Skyfall and not letting his feelings show. Supposedly, it was cute. Q wanted to bang his head against the wall. He hated cute. He bloody detested cute.

 

“I call this 'getting us both out of here before we end up strangling each other.'” Q glanced up from his mobile phone screen and blinked in surprise as he realised how close Bond was standing, and how intently he was staring at Q's face in the scarce light. Damn. The blue of those eyes couldn't be washed away even in a mostly dark room. Swoon. No. Focus.

 

“May I ask what you're doing?”

 

“It's better if you don't.” Q looked at Bond and smiled. “You can claim innocence easier.”

 

~

 

An hour later, and it had become obvious that all there was to do was to wait it out (which Eve, the prankster, must have known from the start); Q was politically savvy enough not to cause an incident while there was a minister in the building, and there were precious few options available outside from a technological malfunction.

 

Bond was taking it surprisingly well, sitting on the floor with his back leaning on the door, and after a brief contemplation Q sat down next to him, close enough to touch. They listened to the music through the door, and the muted chatter of people, and Q thought to himself that this wasn't actually half bad. In fact, it was... nice. He heard Bond humming under his breath along to the carols played, and he joined in, expecting to feel silly, but didn't. In fact, he was feeling quite festive, and a bit sentimental, especially when his favourite Christmas song came on and they sang it together. For a while, they tried to guess which song would come on next, and groaning if it was a not-favourite.

 

Bond seemed to hate 'Let it Snow' (‘who in their right mind would enjoy snow?!’) and enjoy 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'. Q didn't like 'Silent Night' (‘puts me right into sleep’) but could've listened to 'O Holy Night' all day long. They sat a while on silence and listened as Christmas carols were replaced by pop songs, and Q imagined the minister had to be long gone now. Oddly, he didn’t feel in such a hurry anymore.

 

Q softly leaned his cheek on Bond's shoulder, and sighed. He was having the time of his life, while Bond had to be bored.

 

“I'm sorry,” he said. “This can't be much fun for you. You could be in there charming the pants off of anybody you wanted.”

 

“No, I couldn't,” Bond said, sounding a little wistful. It was a strange thing, and stranger yet was what followed. “Not anybody I wanted.”

 

“How so?”

 

“Because even if I was out there you'd still be stuck here in your god-awful jumper.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

Q sensed some movement, and Bond clarified, “I just tore out a piece of what was supposed to be mistletoe, I think, from my jumper, and I'm holding it right above your head.”

 

This was getting curiouser and curiouser. “Now why would you do that?”

 

Bond's lips came down on his, and that was the end of that line of questioning.

 

“See? I knew it. Rendezvous,” Q complained when he was finally able to get some air some minutes later, straightening his glasses that Bond had knocked askew. He was pretty sure they were fogged up, too. Bloody double-oh's and their snogging skills.

 

Bond nuzzled his jawline with his nose, snorting laughter. “Shut up Q.”

 

“Make me.”

 

~

 

Bond did.

 

~

 

Another half an hour later, and MI:6 had quieted down, the party goers vacating the premises to likely continue the party elsewhere at a more relaxed venue, and the two men left the supply closet, red-cheeked and walking a little awkwardly – but only after Q had disabled the security feed in the section they were in and ensured the staff was down to the skeleton crew.

 

Q made a face as he saw Bond's jumper properly for the first time; muted orange with swirls of green. “You should stick to your bespoke suits. That's even worse in daylight. If possible.”

 

“Like I said. Guaranteed winner.” Bond put his hands in his pockets, grinning. Q wanted to swoon.

 

Instead, he glanced at Bond coyly. “I'll bet it would look better on my bedroom floor?” It came out a bit less sultry and a lot more hopeful than he'd intended, but judging by the darkening of Bond's eyes it came out just perfect.

 

“Let's go.”

 

~

 

Q got a text message from Eve while he was busy snogging Bond in the back-seat of a taxi.

 

_You're welcome. Happy holidays boffin! Xx_

  


end


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